162 
We will perhaps like to stay an hour with those flowers over 
which the fairies eee cast their spell. Some may even follow 
the fairies lon may gather the story of their presence 
from all ie on Bes of all lands : especially ay Mrs. 
eee s, on Devonshire; and from Friend’s and King’s volumes 
“ Flowerlore,” Thiselton Dyer on “ The Folklore of oa uy 
Ellacombe's . Panter of Shakespeare,’ Grindon’s “Shakes- 
peare Flora,” etc. r we may go back to older English author- 
ities famous for details of medical or magical powers of plants, * 
the old herbalists Turner, Gerarde, Coles, Parkinson and Cu 
peper, not omitting Aubrey, who at his death in 1697, ie 
the line of these prophets of magic. 
What use the fairies were believed to make of plants we learn 
in detail from William Browne, the quaint Devonshire poet, w 
the year of the death of Shakespeare, published, in his Britannie’s 
Pastorals, 1616, his account of the Fairies’ Table 
“A little paetaines that was now growing thinner 
By being one time shaven for the dinner 
y 
He described its cloth, 
«Of pure white rose-leaves,”” 
its bread ; 
«* The milk-white kernels of the hazelnut’ ; 
its ee 
© Were all of ic d | 
One supper, a betwixt two cowslips cast.’? 
The fairies’ se for this court ora stood 
Cladd in a suit of ru 
A monkeshood serving em a hatt’? 
his bottles 
‘ Every one a cherry-stone”’ ; 
the fairies’ drink— 
And most of them were filled with early dew ; 
Some choicer ones, a as for the king most meet, 
Held meldew, and ‘kl ue 
Oberon, King of the Fairies stood, in his royal robes, 
ef oe in a sute of speckled gilliflowre,’’ 
“ce His 
in the trade 
Was s like a helmet of a lilly made. 
